The present invention relates generally to decorative lighting, and more particularly to arrays of lights arranged in a grid, lattice or other pattern.
Conventional Christmas lighting utilize a plurality of individual lights that are arranged in serial order in a predetermined spacing along the length of one or more wires. Each such light includes a plurality of sockets and a plurality of corresponding lights that are received within the sockets Such light arrays may be referred to in the art as light "strings". These light strings may terminate at one or more ends thereof in electrical plugs or receptacles which are used to connect the light strings to a source of electrical power or to connect to additional light strings. These string lights are typically applied to Christmas trees and structures by hanging or winding them around a support structure, such as a Christmas tree.
Although light strings appear decorative when mounted in such a manner on a tree, it is difficult to uniformly arrange the lights in a pleasing pattern. Additionally, the winding process is tedious and often may result in broken branches and tree needles. When removed from a support structure, the light strings must then be wound in a coil and tangling may result during their removal.
In order to overcome these problems, light "grids" have been developed to facilitate the arrangement and mounting of decorative lights on support structures, such as Christmas trees. For the most part, these light grids are expensive to construct or are flimsy in construction. U.S. Pat. No. 5,424,925 issued Jun. 13, 1995 describes a decorative lighting system in which pairs of electrical wires are laid out in a grid pattern on top of and attached to a separate grid structure. The use of these second structure increases the complexity of manufacture of such a light grid, which results in an increase in the cost of manufacture of such a light grid.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,645,342, issued Jul. 8, 1997 describes a decorative light grid in which singles wires are joined to individual light sockets at nodal points of the light grid. This grid includes a plurality of nodes that include individual light sockets. The nodes are formed by joining certain wires to the light sockets by binding the wires to the sockets with adhesive tape or plastic sleeves. If the bands that join the wires to the sockets are broken, the node is destroyed and the wires come apart. Additionally, when single wires are used to join the light sockets together, the single wires may not be able to resist stress induced from repeated placements on and removal from support structures.
The present invention is directed to a decorative light assembly that overcomes the disadvantages of the aforementioned prior art and which utilizes wires that are tied together at the nodes of the lighting assembly to substantially prevent movement of the light sockets away from the nodes and to increase the strength of the light assembly.